Big names on the list include Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Battlefield V and Fallout 76. Not sure any if these would be suitable for BobLAN, but they may be worth picking up when their prices drop in 2019!

Activision have announced a special edition of Black Ops 4, due for release on 12th October 2018. The Mystery Box Edition includes the game itself, alongside a 1000 piece zombie jigsaw, figurine, a comic book, steelbook case, a Black Ops pass and much more. As you might expect, it won't come cheap, but there is usually plenty of interest in these special editions which usually do sell out immediately.

Following an overhaul of the site (SEO URLs and fully responsive) I thought I'd see how many other sites from the BarrysWorld/MCW era were still about. Sadly, hardly any were still there. Here are the ones that I could find:

Bethesda have recently announced two new games in their existing franchises:

Fallout 76 - an online survival RPG game in the world of Fallout, but in the style of DayZ. Vault 76 was mentioned in Fallout 3 in The Citadel (Brotherhood of Steel HQ) which suggested that it was a Control Vault located in Virginia (hence playing Take Me Home Country Roads on the trailer). The short teaser can be see on youtube

Rage 2 - the follow-up to iD Software's long-awaited Rage, the sequel promises to be more open-world, with a destructible environment. It will be set in the same dystopian setting 100 years after the asteroid strike, and a trailer can also be seen on youtube, with release not due until 2019

The latest in the Battlefield franchise was announced this week. Battlefield V will take place in WWII and feature a 64 player multiplayer mode. Theatres vary from snowy Norwegian mountains to the deserts of North Africa. The expected release date is 19th October this year, so in time for BobLAN 2018.2!

And there we have it - another BobLAN sadly comes to an end, and what a few days it has been!

There were an amazing number of people from early on Thursday (when we found a new ‘devil-may-care’ attitude to bed allocation) through to Sunday afternoon, when the regulars (Al, Bean, Rich and Dan) were helping Bob with the initial cleanup. Numbers good enough to allow a near constant ability to have 5 on 5 matches.

Games wise - more new games than we’ve had in the last few meets and some real successes...

Unreal Tournament was surprisingly good - with lots of built in LAN support, a great engine that played well on all machines, and a zero cost to play. The variety of game modes from standard individual and team death match, capture the flag, Blitz and PvE Siege was a real winner. Slight risk this game may die, as the Epic developers have been focusing on Fortnite from what I’ve read, but hopefully will be around for a couple of years.

Darwin Project was another class free addition to the line up. Again a big draw was the support for private matches with a decent number of people. 10 people includes most players at any time. Interesting to see the direction of travel over the next year from the devs. And I’m guessing there’s a few of us who will put the time in to get to level 10 so we can have a broad range of Directors by the next LAN.

Titanfall 2. Always good fun. First time I’ve played the Horde mode (protect he harvester), which I thought was quite fun.

Grid… still the go-to race game.

Rocket league. Enjoyed, but was personally black and white in terms of form… from scoring last second winners one day, to losing 7-0 the next. More practice required perhaps?!!

PUBG… couple of games played. Restricted by the cap on 4 player teams.

CS:GO… standard

Day of defeat… a few rounds played. Perhaps time to put this to bed? The look and feel of the game are getting a bit old, and I didn’t really enjoy it compared to some of the others played

VR… a fair amount of VR games were played. But although the hardware is getting better, I think this is difficult to fit into a LAN mainly due to space. Even with just 2 players in the main room, it is pretty restrictive (as I found to personal cost as George stabbed an enemy, only to find the back of my head in the way). One to think about. Might be more inclusive for sit down games like project cars. Guess we’ll see.

A few games we didn’t play…

Battlefield 1 – given the size of the maps, just feels difficult in a LAN environment. That said, I’m sure we’ll give BF2 a try when it comes out.

Battlefield 3 – maybe time to put to bed with some of the newer alternatives. Although we are missing a good war game

Board games… a spattering over the weekend.

In hardware news… Alistair’s PC woes of the last fortnight fixed simply in the end, by using the other DisplayPort on his new Corsair PC. And apart from some light humour with regards to the speed of game loads - an absolutely beautiful, impressively powerful and whisper quiet new machine. A new benchmark.

Food… think everyone enjoyed the homemade curry on the Thursday, followed by pulled pork sandwiches on Friday, standard awesome breakfasts (including some superb black pudding), and then a mixture of Chinese/India/Kebabs on Fri/Sat.

Chat was varied… enjoyed the tech talk; all things DevOps, Agile, slack, ms teams, JIRA, Rally, kubernetes, cloud, GDPR, media playlist histories, and the rest! Although I did forgot to ask Bob what the hell he is doing in the back garden, with what looked like a stone wall in bits.

And as always - a HUGE THANK YOU - to Bob and Lynda for organising the event, and letting us have the run of their house for a weekend. It is very, very much appreciated!!